


Down Time

by lamardeuse



Series: Getting To Know You [11]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-05
Updated: 2010-05-05
Packaged: 2017-10-09 07:53:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/84770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lamardeuse/pseuds/lamardeuse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series to accompany Season Two of SGA. Part Eleven: Epiphany.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Down Time

**Author's Note:**

> Please note: rating refers to overall series rating. Individual parts may carry a lower rating.

The second week in the sanctuary, John started dreaming about Afghanistan.

This was one of the reasons why he really hated long periods of introspection; ultimately, the memories from the non-introspective parts of your life would come up and bite you on the ass.  Antarctica, for all its isolation, hadn’t been like that at all, because there had always been a poker game or some kind of mindless physical activity going on in your down time, and if you didn’t feel like socializing you could read or prep for the next mission.  Here there was nothing to do but contemplate the path to Ascension, and since that had never been a particular goal of his, he was left with hours of navel-gazing with no hope of a payoff.

The anger at being abandoned kept his mind occupied for a while, but that only lasted a couple of weeks, because he couldn’t keep from speculating that part or all of the team had been killed trying to figure out a way to save him.  At that point, it might have made sense for the others to assume he was dead.  Another wonderful possibility he didn’t want to contemplate was that other, more pressing concerns – like the Wraith finding out Atlantis was still standing – had diverted them from a rescue attempt.  Unfortunately, the whole daily meditation routine pretty much guaranteed he’d end up thinking about all possibilities at one time or another.

After that, it was a short hop to seeing them in his dreams – dead, broken, lifeless.  Elizabeth with hair as white as her counterpart from the other timeline, Teyla and Ronon finally overpowered and defeated, Rodney with a gaping hole in his chest. 

Some nights his dreams got all mixed up, mingling together until he could no longer separate his old life from his new one.  He’d dream Rodney’s body was sprawled in the desert beside Mitch’s, arms and legs splayed at unnatural angles, skin burnt and hanging off his bones.  He’d relive the inquiry, but Caldwell would be the presiding officer.  He’d be in Antarctica, flying his Pave Hawk into a swarm of darts.

He tried to reason with himself.  It was this damned place; maybe the people who’d built it had fixed it so anybody who didn’t want to Ascend went gradually crazy, tortured by the horrors of their messy human existence until they drowned themselves in the village fountain. 

Yeah, all right, so that line of thought didn’t help much.  And after that, every time he walked by the fountain, he shivered.

He tried running through the warm summer fields until his legs burned and he nearly passed out from heat stroke, but even he could recognize that was self-destructive behavior.  He tried getting the village kids interested in soccer, though he should have known that getting them to give up some of their meditation time would be about as likely as getting a bunch of American kids to throw away their cellphones.  Despite the fact that it seemed to enjoy trying to kill him on a regular basis, John had to admit the shimmery monster guy was his most successful – albeit twisted – form of recreation.  Although he would have preferred some backup, at least the damned thing was keeping him sane, because it starred in at least half of his dreams, and that kind of nightmare he could handle.  At least it was real, it was _there_, it was something he could _fight._  
   
And all through it, Teer would watch him.  Not in a way that was creepy or even flirtatious – she was a little too spiritual to flirt effectively – but in a way that unnerved him nevertheless.  It was like she was waiting for him to change, to become the kind of guy who’d willingly walked through that door so he could metamorphose into a beam of light zipping around the universe.

He wasn’t ever going to be that guy.  But if he stayed here, he didn’t think he was going to be himself for much longer, either.

    
    
    
    
 

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

    
    
    
    
 

  
One night about four months in, he dreamed Rodney showed up, just him, alone.  He stood in the middle of the field, a big happy grin on his face, but when John reached for him, he shook his head.

“I’m sorry,” Rodney said, smile fading as he shimmered into translucence, “your time is up.  Please insert another three dollars and seventy five cents for another two minutes.”

“I’m in another galaxy!”  John screamed, even as some tiny part of him knew this conversation was _insane_.  “I didn’t bring any fucking quarters with me, Rodney!”

Rodney gave him one last pitying look and disappeared, to be replaced by his father.  “You’re a disgrace to the Air Force,” he snapped.  “Poor reconnaissance, that’s all this is.”

“I’m in another galaxy!” John screamed again.  “Unless you have some quarters, could you please stay on Earth where you belong?”

And then Teer was standing in front of him.  “Take my hand,” she said softly.  “I have all the quarters you will ever need.”

John spun on his heel and started running.  He woke up gasping and drenched in sweat.

“Fuck,” he groaned, flopping back onto the straw mattress.  “I hate meditating.”

  


    
    
    
    
 

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

    
    
    
    
 

  
When Teer invited him to sit beside her, he was pissed off at first; after all, she’d interrupted his fifteenth search of the bag for a damned note, would it have killed Rodney to write him a damned _note_?  But once he sat down beside her and started listening to her, he was almost relieved.  He was so tired of this, so tired of trying to outrun the jumbled morass of memories and regrets and dream Rodneys asking for quarters that when she leaned in and kissed him he kissed her back, because at least she _knew _what she wanted, and he thought, _at least this is something I can _do.

The last woman he’d been with had been a tiny blond airman on Antarctica with the strength of a linebacker who really liked being pinned against the wall while they fucked.  Teer was all serene smiles and warm skin and a strange buzzing energy that had nothing to do with physical power.  Touching her was like running your hands over a van der Graaf generator, feeling the electricity spark against your fingertips and sending that thrill of danger through you even though you knew it was perfectly safe.  He touched her in every way he knew how, and he thought she seemed to be enjoying herself, but she was utterly, eerily silent except for the sounds of her steady breathing, and he didn’t know what the hell to do with someone who seemed so—calm about it.  Rodney—Rodney was never calm; sometimes all John had to do was look at him and his breathing would hitch and he’d swallow so loudly it could be heard on the East Pier.  One of these days he’d see if he could make Rodney come without touching him; it would be an interesting experiment—

_What the hell are you talking about, _he berated himself,_ you’re never going to_—

Teer pulsed around him, her eyes widening and that secret smile growing even more serene, and he suddenly thought, _God, I didn’t use protection, what if she’s pregnant, she’ll Ascend and my kid will be floating through space, visiting my nightmares when I’m old and crazy and sitting by the fountain alone talking to myself. _ He tried to pull out but she shook her head and wrapped her legs around his hips and hey, he was only human.

_You're only human.  You're only human.  Keep telling yourself that, John._  
__  
Afterward, he pretended to be asleep while she watched him.  Even though she probably knew he was awake, she still didn’t say a word.

    
    
    
    
 

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

    
    
    
    
 

  
On the one hundred and forty-seventh day, he felt himself change.

He realized that it had probably been coming for a long time, but nevertheless there was a sensation that was almost like the _snick _of a lock falling into place, and just like that he could feel the energy of everyone in the village, no matter where they were, like he was carrying a life signs detector in his head.  It was more than that, though:  he could tell that the woman talking to Teer had cancer, and that the man over in the next hut had a serious kidney condition.  He thought about turning it on himself, then decided he didn’t want to know.

He wondered if this was how Atlantis felt as they walked its halls, fierce and proud and infinitely weary with the burden of recognizing the heartbeats of its children.

    
    
    
    
 

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

    
    
    
    
 

  
On the one hundred and seventy-second day, he thought that he might just as well go with them.  It wasn’t like he was going to get out of here any other way.  And after all, Chaya had been able to be – normal – at least some of the time.  He could just float off to Atlantis and…rematerialize there.  He didn’t have to be a floaty beam of light if he didn’t want to be, right?

_Oh God_, John thought as he stared up at the cold, unblinking stars, his head in his shaking hands, _when did this become my life?_

    
    
    
    
 

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

    
    
    
    
 

  
“What the hell is the matter with you?” Rodney demanded the second the doors closed behind them.

“What do you mean what the hell is the matter with me?” John retorted.  He was tired and sore and just too damned drained to get into this right now, but Rodney had followed him to his quarters in pissed-off silence and he’d been too tired and sore and drained to shoo him away.  The ability had started fading as soon as they left the sanctuary, but he’d have to talk to Carson in the morning about that gallstone of his, and while he was at it he’d let him in on Ronon’s difficulty sleeping, as long as he promised never to tell Ronon how he’d found out.  Rodney was in pretty good health with the exception of his slight case of carpal tunnel syndrome and his nascent ulcer.  And surprise, surprise: it turned out he _hadn’t _been exaggerating all this time about the citrus allergy and the hypoglycemia. 

Rodney folded his arms and glared at him, although considering he was obviously horny as hell, the glare lost some of its effectiveness.

“Can we talk about this later?” John murmured, leaning in to brush Rodney’s lips with his own.  “I know it’s only been a couple of hours for you, but I could really could do with a little reunion sex here.”

“Two point three of the longest hours of my life, thank you very much,” Rodney growled, lips stiff.  “It’s not like we were sitting on our asses waiting for six months.  Ask Carson how quickly I organized the rescue mission.”

“Awww,” John drawled, nuzzling Rodney’s neck.  “You got all commanding and bitchy with everyone, didn’t you?”

“And culturally insensitive, and – stop that.  You’re not going to get around me that easily.”

“What was the question again?”

“Are you deaf?  What.  The hell.  Is the matter.  With you.”

John sighed against Rodney’s cheek.  “Nothing, now that I’m home.”

Rodney placed his hands on John’s shoulders and straightened his arms, forcing John to look into his eyes.  “You thought we weren’t coming back for you, didn’t you?”

“What was I supposed to think, Rodney?” John snapped, breaking away from Rodney’s grasp.  “It’d been six months!”

Rodney’s arms dropped to his sides.  “When did you _start _thinking we’d given up on you?”

John looked away.

“John.”

“Yeah, okay,” he huffed, scrubbing at his face with a hand.  “So it didn’t take all that long.  What can I say?”

“Oh, I don’t know.  Maybe that you’re a total head case?”

John scowled.  “Anybody ever tell you you fight like a six year old?”

“All the time.  Stop making this about me.  We’re dealing with your hang-ups at the moment.”

“This is really about Teer, isn’t it?” John demanded, desperation leading him to play a weak hand.

“No, this…”  Rodney stared at him, mouth working.  “Who’s Teer?”

John waved a hand and Rodney’s eyes widened.  “Oh.  The woman.”

“Yeah.”  Might was well get it over with, he decided.

Rodney nodded several times more than was necessary.  “Is this where you confess your sins and beg for forgiveness?”  He sounded far too calm about it, and John felt his gut dive for his shoes.

“It happened once.  She was – convinced I was her destiny or something.  It was…” he tried to think of a word, but “kind of bizarre” didn’t adequately convey the sentiment, and he couldn’t think of anything else.

“Did you think she was _your _destiny?” Rodney asked, voice uncharacteristically small.

“Of course not!” John exploded.  “Christ, Rodney, I nearly went _nuts _in there thinking you’d all been killed trying to rescue me or attacked by the Wraith, and then weird…_stuff_ started to happen to me, and if you hadn’t shown up I probably would’ve Ascended with them, because I couldn’t stand the thought of spending the rest of my damned life there not _knowing _what had happened to you!”

Rodney was staring at him openmouthed while John stood there listening to his heart pound.  “We have to stop doing this to one another,” Rodney said softly after a moment, and John’s pulse stuttered.  He waited for Rodney to finish what he was saying, to walk out the door, to leave once and for all.

Instead, Rodney stepped closer to him and bracketed John’s hips with his wide hands. 

“From now on,” Rodney said, leaning in, “we’re just going to have to make sure that both of us are stuck in the same predicament at the same time.”

“You mean _in _the same time, don’t you?” John said, smiling against Rodney’s lopsided mouth.

“John?  Now’s the time to shut up.”

“Then why don’t you—mmmphh.”

    
    
    
    
 

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

    
    
    
    
 

  
“Holy mother of _Jesus_.”

“Now _that’s _kinky,” John said, grinning at Rodney as he lay sprawled out on John’s bed with his dick in his hand and his belly and chest liberally spattered with his own come.

“I’m just—I’m just,” Rodney panted, waving his free hand listlessly, “Wow.  I think you broke me.”

“I didn’t even touch you,” John returned, arching an eyebrow.

“Oh, don’t play innocent with me, just get the hell over here and take off all your clothes.”

John complied with half of the request, standing at the foot of the bed while he slowly stripped under Rodney’s heated and astonished gaze.  Rodney gasped and sighed and moaned and cursed through all of it until John was so hard he thought he’d explode, and then Rodney was begging him, and suddenly time raced forward and when he took his next breath he was buried in Rodney, taking him fast and rough and hard, and Rodney was sighing his name over and over into his open mouth and _Christ _he’d missed this, missed this—

_missed you—_  
__  
“Yeah,” Rodney panted, “missed you too, c’mon—”

John kissed Rodney’s throat and rocked into him over and over while the waves lapped against Atlantis’ shimmering silver skin.  “That's it,” he whispered, “Talk, just talk, keep talking…”

**Author's Note:**

> First published December 2005.


End file.
